Research Posters 101

Poster sessions at conferences and university research
fairs provide excellent opportunities for students to show
off their work and to discuss their research in an
informal setting. While it is important to present good
work at a poster session, even the most outstanding
research projects will receive little attention if they
are not presented well. This article provides a guide to
creating and presenting an attractive and informative
research poster.

Content

The most important part of your poster is the content.
Before you start planning your poster design, decide on
the content you wish to present. Students often make the
mistake of trying to present an entire thesis or journal
article on a poster. Don't try this approach. People
do not have the time or patience to read a lengthy report
at a poster session. Your poster should be an abstract
that advertises your work. If your audience likes the
poster, they can request a copy of your whole thesis or
paper to read when they get home. You might provide copies
of your paper next to your poster or pass out flyers with
information on how to get your paper electronically, but
don't put the whole paper on your poster.

Given that you have limited space, you must decide what
aspects of your research are most important to present.
This depends a lot on your audience. If you are presenting
your poster to a general audience you will need to provide
a lot of background information and emphasize the
applications of your research. If your audience already
understands and appreciates your research area, you should
focus on your unique contributions and emphasize your
results (if you have any -- some poster sessions allow
students to display research in progress).

Regardless of what you decide to emphasize, make sure your
poster includes a clear and succinct statement of your
research problem, a brief description of your approach,
and summary of any results you have obtained to date. The
organizers of the poster session might also supply a list
of items that your poster should include.

Create an outline of the content you plan to present. Then
fill in each section of the outline with short paragraphs
and bulleted or numbered lists. Do not include lengthy
paragraphs on your poster. Unless you will be presenting
to a very technical audience, avoid complicated equations
and code fragments of more than a few lines. Depending on
the size of your poster and the number of graphics you
include you will generally have room for somewhere between
500 and 1500 words. If your initial draft is longer than
that, reduce the number of words before you start working
on the poster design.

Overall Design

Before you begin designing, determine the overall size and
shape for your poster. Find out whether your poster
session has any size limits that you must adhere to. Also
find out whether you are expected to present a free
standing poster or whether you will be given a board on
which you can attach the various components of your
poster. Even if you will be given a board, you may still
wish to mount all of your poster components on one or
several large panels. This tends to give your poster a
more unified look and it will be easier for you to
assemble and disable your poster quickly at the poster
session.

Regardless of whether you design your poster in panels or
small components, you should divide your content into
modular components, each of which will be placed in its
own ``box''. Boxes can be created by printing
rectangles around each component or mounting the
components on sheets of colored construction paper. If you
design your poster in panels you can easily group boxes
together, placing several small boxes in one larger box.
This allows you to visually group related elements. If you
design your poster in small components you can use color,
position, or even lines made of string to visually group
related elements on the board.

You should also arrange your poster elements so that there
is a sensible visual flow -- left to right or top to
bottom, for example. If you have multiple columns or rows
of elements it is sometimes helpful to number elements
with bold numerals or use arrows to mark the suggested
flow.

Software

The right software can simplify your poster preparation
process tremendously. If you plan to create your poster in
one or several large panels, I highly recommend the use of
a desktop publishing package such as Quark, PageMaker, or
FrameMaker. These packages will allow you to design your
poster in modular boxes of varying sizes that you can
easily reposition. You can then print each panel as one
large sheet on a large-format plotter, print it in tiles
on a standard printer, or print it at a reduced percentage
on a standard printer and enlarge it on a large-format
copier. If you don't have a desktop publishing package
and can't find one in any of your school's
computer labs, a word-processor, drawing package, or even
LaTeX will do. If you use one of these packages it is
generally easiest to use uniformly sized boxes that each
fit on the largest sized paper that you can use in your
printer. Slide preparation programs such as PowerPoint can
be great tools for creating uniformly sized elements with
consistent fonts and borders.

Presenting Text

When designing your poster you should focus on creating a
design that can be read quickly and places visual emphasis
on the most important parts. The first step for achieving
these goals is to select one or two easy-to-read fonts.
Your text should be set in a large font -- 16 pt minimum,
30 to 60 pt preferred. Select a larger, bold font for
headings (possibly in multiple sizes if you have more than
one level of headings). Select a smaller font for details
and footnotes that are not essential to understanding your
research but may be of interest to some readers.

Your text should be presented in such a way that someone
who does not want to spend a lot of time reading your
poster can get a quick overview. Whenever possible,
present text as bulleted or numbered lists. Use a bold
font or an alternate color to emphasize the most important
bits of text. Place details in a smaller font below the
main points or in separate boxes off to the side.

Finally, don't forget to spell check and proof read
your text!

Presenting Graphics

As the old saying goes, a picture's worth a thousand
words. Graphics can be excellent tools for explaining
procedures, describing equipment, or summarizing results.
Use graphs, flow-charts, photographs, and diagrams to
illustrate your poster. Not only will they add visual
interest, but they will allow people to gain a quick
understanding of your work without reading lengthy
paragraphs of text.

Depending on the software you use to create your poster,
you may be able to use the same software to create
graphics. Some software also allows you to import graphics
from drawing or graphing programs. But if this is
difficult or impossible to do with your software,
don't hesitate to physically cut and paste graphics
onto your poster.

Using Color

Color is an excellent tool for brightening up your poster,
visually grouping elements, and drawing attention to the
most important elements. It can also make graphs and
diagrams easier to read and understand. However, color
should be used carefully and with purpose. It should not
be randomly applied just for the sake of having color.
Unless you are experienced with using color, select a
palette of one to four colors and use them consistently
throughout your poster.

If you have access to a good color printer, consider
designing your entire poster in color. Select a dark color
such as black or deep blue for your main text. Select a
bright color such as red or magenta for important text.
You might also want to use a contrasting color for
headings and bullets. You can make entire elements stand
out or identify them as part of a group by filling them
with a light-colored background or surrounding them with a
brightly colored border. You might use color to visually
distinguish each section of your poster (for example,
problem, background, approach, and results) or to indicate
the importance of each item.

Even if you do not have a color printer, there is plenty
you can do with color. The simplest way to add color to
your poster is to mount each of the modular components on
a sheet of colored construction paper. But be consistent
with your colors: do not buy a package of assorted colors
and use one of each color. You can also print your
headings in an outlined font and color them in with bright
colored markers. Use the markers to shade bar graphs and
diagrams in matching colors.

Printing Your Poster

If you are fortunate enough to have a large-format color
plotter at your university, ask if you can use it for your
poster. These plotters are often found in electrical
engineering departments and architecture schools. They can
be used to print panels measuring approximately 2 feet by
3 feet on one sheet of paper. Some copy shops and desktop
publishing companies charge by the foot for printing on
their large plotters, but the fees are often prohibitively
expensive on a student budget.

If you want to print each panel on a single sheet but
don't have a large plotter, you can print the panels
on the largest paper your printer takes and have it
enlarged at a local copy shop. Another option is to print
each panel in tiles and carefully tape them together.

But large panels are not essential to a successful poster.
Items printed on standard laser printer paper (8 1/2 x 11,
8 1/2 x 14, etc.) can look great when mounted on
construction paper.

Putting Your Poster Together

If fabric-covered boards will be available at your poster
session, use velcro to attach your poster to the boards.
Office supply stores, art supply stores, hardware stores,
and perhaps even your university book store sell
adhesive-backed velcro strips that you can stick to the
back of your poster. Use one strip on the back of each
small component or, for a large panel, place a strip at
each corner. Make sure you use the rough part of the
velcro -- the soft part won't stick to the fabric
board. If you're not sure whether the surface of the
board will be suitable for velcro, bring push pins along
just in case. It also doesn't hurt to bring along a
roll of masking tape in case neither velcro nor push pins
will work with the board, and a roll of clear tape for
repairing any damage that occurs during travel. You might
also consider laminating your components to make them
stronger.

If your poster must be free standing or will be presented
on an easel, mount your components or panels on foam core
board. This board is generally available at art supply
stores and sometimes at college book stores. It is about
one-quarter inch thick with a glossy paper front and back
and a foam center. Rather than gluing your components to
the board, I recommend using flat, colored thumb tacks.
Select a color that matches one of the colors you used in
your poster or use plain white or black. Tacks are a lot
easier to deal with than glue and allow your foam core
board to be easily reused.

Free standing boards can be created by hinging two or
three foam core panels together with strong tape or by
taping a foam core or cardboard strut to the back of a
single foam core panel.

However you decide to assemble your poster, do it neatly.
If you must cut things out of paper, draw guidelines for
yourself with a ruler and cut carefully along the lines.
If you must tape things, make sure the tape is not visible
on the front of your poster; use double-sided tape if
necessary. Use glue sparingly, and test it on a small
corner of the paper you are using before applying to large
areas. Craft glue can often cause thin paper to wrinkle.
Rubber cement sometimes melts ink, especially the wax ink
used in some color laser printers. Glue sticks usually
work well for attaching white paper to construction paper.

Finally, if you are taking your poster to a conference,
pack it so that it will not get damaged in transit. Large
panels printed on paper can be rolled and transported in a
mailing tube. Foam core boards should be placed in a large
cardboard carrier. These carriers are often available for
free or at a low price from the stores that sell foam
core. If you can't find one, sandwich your foam core
boards between two large sheets of corrugated cardboard
and place tape around all the sides.

Presenting Your Poster

Go to the poster session ready to talk to a lot of people.
Not only is this a good opportunity for you to tell people
about your work, but it is also a good opportunity for you
to get new ideas that might improve your work. So if
people seem interested in what you are doing, engage them
in conversation. A poster forum I presented at a few
months before I began interviewing for a job was good
practice for answering the types of questions I got asked
about my research while interviewing.

It's also a good idea to think ahead of time about
some of the questions you might get asked. This is
especially important if you are presenting a small
component of a large group research project. You should
have a working knowledge of the whole project and be able
to answer questions about the project in general. If you
don't think you can do that, talk with the other
members of your research group to get a better
understanding of the rest of the project. You should also
have some knowledge of similar research projects and how
your project differs from them. A frequent question people
ask about research is how it differs from similar work, so
be prepared with an answer.